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Iran says it’s victim to fresh cyber attack

Iran’s nuclear program has been hit by a new ‘cyber attack’, the country claims.

As Reuters reports, Iran says that it has identified a new hostile worm called ‘Stars’. The attack follows Stuxnet, a worm that mysteriously appeared around the world last year before it emerged that it appeared to be specifically designed as a way of stalling Iran’s nuclear program by interfering with uranium enrichment technology

A report in the New York Times earlier this year said that Stuxnet had directly affected Iran’s nuclear ambitions, something that the country denies. Both the New York Times’ report and the Iranian government placed responsibility for Stuxnet with the United States and Israel.

There’s no word as to whether the new Stars worm has targeted Iran’s nuclear problem or other parts of the regime. Iran’s commander of civil defense, Gholamreza Jalali told the country’s Mehr news agency “The virus is congruous and harmonious with the (computer) system and in the initial phase it does minor damage and might be mistaken for some executive files of government organisations.”

Jalali also admitted that Stuxnet may still be a threat to the country.”We should know that fighting the Stuxnet virus does not mean the threat has been completely tackled, because viruses have a certain life span and they might continue their activities in another way.”

The apparent ‘cyber war’ on Iran shows how sophisticated a highly targeted computer viruses can be. Stuxnet was public knowledge for months before its target was revealed.

Martin Bryant was Editor-at-Large at The Next Web. He left the company in April 2016 for pastures new. You can find him on Twitter, on Snapchat as Martinsfp, subscribe to him on Facebook and visit his personal site. He's based in Manchester, UK and has a thing for quirky American music and Japanese video games.